Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 5.djvu/30

90 towards extended ideas of popular right, with more fairness and firmness to the persons of his opponents, or with more apparent latitude of individual judgment, on some of the most trying occasions, in all those scenes that have occurred in our recent parliamentary history. As a public speaker, he was not remarkable for the popular graces and attractions. If eloquence consists in rousing the passions by strong metaphors, in awakening the sympathies by studied allusions, or in arresting attention by the sallies of a mind rich in peculiar associations, Mr Horner was not eloquent. But if eloquence be the art of persuading by accurate reasoning, and a right adjustment of all the parts of a discourse, by the powers of a tact which is rather intellectually right than practically fine, Mr Horner was eloquent. He spoke with the steady calmness of one who saw his way on principle, while he felt it simply and immediately, through sobriety of judgment and good conduct; and never seemed to be more excited by his subject, or more carried away in the vehemence of debate, than to make such exertions as left one uniform impression on the minds of his hearers that he spoke from an honest internal conviction and from a real desire to be useful. In private life, he was distinguished by an impressive graveness which would have appeared heavy, had it not been observed in permanent conjunction with an easy steadiness of conversation, and a simplicity of manners very far from any thing cold, affected, or inelegant His sense of honour was high and decided. His taste for literature, like his taste for conduct, was correct. As his acts of friendship or of duty were done without effort or finesse, so did he enjoy with quietness and relish those tender and deeply felt domestic affections which can sweeten or even adorn almost any condition of life. He was not fitted to win popularity, but his habitual moderation, his unaffected respect for every thing respectable that was opposed to him, arid the successful pains which he took to inform himself well on the grounds and nature of every business in which he bore a part, gained him an influence more valuable to a man of judgment, than popularity."

Mr Horner sat to the celebrated Raeburn for his picture some years before his demise. The painter has produced a faithful likeness, but no engraving of it has yet been executed.

HORSLEY,, an eminent antiquary, historian, and divine, was born at Pinkie House in Mid-Lothian, in the year 1685. His parents were English non-conformists, who are supposed to have fled into Scotland on account of the persecution in the reign of Charles II. How it happened that they resided at Pinkie House, then the property of the earl of Dunfermline, as successor to the estates of 'the abbey of Dunfermline, is not known. It is clearly ascertained that his progenitors belonged to Northumberland, and were of no mean standing. His parents returned to Northumberland immediately after the Revolution, and it is understood that the subject of this notice received the initiatory part of his education at the Newcastle grammar school. He was thereafter sent to pursue his academical studies at Edinburgh; and it would appear, that at a very early age, as we find by the laureation book of the college, he was admitted master of arts in 1701, being then just sixteen years of age. After finishing his theological course, he returned to England, and preached for several years merely as a licentiate; but in 1721, he was ordained minister of a congregation of Protestant dissenters at Morpeth. His mind, however, was directed to other pursuits besides his profession, and his great attainments in geology, mathematics, and most of the other abstruse sciences, of which he gave unquestionable proofs, would probably have gained him a wider and more permanent fame in the present day, than at a time when their principles were in general little understood, and less attended to. In 1722, he invented a simple and ingenious mode of